Some Screenshots From My Assassin Game

[Olorin]

Backstabbing trolls: Just to clarify, did you have the same problems when backstabbing with poison weapon activated? If so, perhaps switching to a weapon with lower damage + poison weapon would work (if backstab doesn't kill, poison will hopefully finish them AND ensure they stay dead).

Stuns through stoneskin: Any weapon that "hits" against a stoneskin mage has its effects go off...hence the elemental damage from FOA going through, the dispel from Arrows of Dispelling working, etc. The only time weapon effects don't work is when you get the "weapon ineffective" message due to PfMW, Mantles, or similar spells.

[Dundee Slaytern]

Originally posted by SixOfSpades: Sword dropped by a Dragon, Cloak dropped by a Lich, Ring dropped by a Demilich, Armor dropped by a Drow, and an Amulet stolen from a Drow. Improved Beholders weep. Hopefully, one day somebody will write a version of Tactics that is actually about tactics, as opposed to cheese and items.

Ah... C~, the HA from F~.

Ring of Gaxx... eh... the Drow Elven Chainmail I guess. Amulet of... erm... Magic Resistance?

As for the cloak, is it from that mod Lich?

Magic Resistance is nice and all, but... how does it protect my Assassin from Imprisonment? It is not the spells nor the poison that frustrates me, it is the fact that the Hive Mother is Hell-bent on sending my Assassin to the bowels of Toril. At the moment, I can only think of using UAI to cast Spell Trap/Immunity and Spell Shield( which is lame in my opinion, since this is a ToB tactic, not a SoA one).

I had to abuse the AI and layout of the Beholder's Lair to beat it, and thus it was not a satisfactory win. I do not mind a difficult fight, and Windspear Hills gave me a little to cheer about( BUT, it was flawed too. More on that when I come to it).

I think... thus far... the Shadow Dragon from the Temple Ruins gave me the best fight, BECAUSE it did not choose to mindlessly focus on the protagonist. Due to that, I had REAL excitment( as opposed to frustration and/or annoyance), because I was not sure who it would attack next. This was the only fight in which I did not cheese, or use ToB tactics, because the Shadow Dragon deserved the respect.

Originally posted by SixOfSpades: Thoughts: After I wrote my Tactics Review, Weimer's next version of the mod said it had made Dragons immune to Wing Buffet. So how yours managed to knock itself out is a mystery to me--as well as why it never used its Dragon Breath. When I went up against it, that was always its first move: Incinerate the entire party before they can do a single thing to avoid it. So it seems that Weimer's decisions here, 1. Keep the way that the Dragon has the party cornered in a little gully, and with the weaker characters protecting the Tanks, no less 2. Keep the way that the Dragon can damage itself and knock itself Unconscious with its own Wing Buffets 3. Make the Dragon forget how to breathe 4. Make the Dragon hell-bent on focusing all attacks on a character it has no reason to think is anything special are all designed to make this fight as cheesy and unrealistic as possible. Way to go, Weimer. And yes, even though Random Wilderness Encounters was written by Kensai Ryu, I'm still blaming Weimer for including a component that is basically hot crap on a stick.

Since Tactics has long since stopped updating, the following is merely some reflection. I do not particularly mind encountering Dragons in the outdoors. It is the way you encounter it, and the AI that troubles me.

One way is to delay the spawning of the Dragon. Unless your party was both blind and deaf, it is kind of hard to miss a Dragon. Spawn the party in the area first, give a text warning of an incoming Dragon, and spawn the Dragon in later.

This way, you can at least buff up a bit; justifying a higher level of scripting for the Dragon, since you had some time to prepare( say two rounds).

Also... remove the "KILL CHARNAME! KILL CHARNAME!" ridiculousness. It may work against solo characters, but it just makes a mockery out of fights against parties. As I emphasised in my screenshots, Imoen had ZERO combat protections. Not even a Potion of Fire Resistance. The Red Dragon could have easily killed her in two blows, or with a single Breath Attack, but noooo, it was too obsessed with Rena to take note of the pink-haired Thief->Mage hugging its' ankles( or the Death Squad of Minsc and Jaheira for that matter).

One thing that BG2 corrected from BG1 was the elimination of the "Chicken Run" tactic. The tactic in which you taunted an enemy to chase you forever and ever, while the rest of your party shot it to death. Why on Gaia's Good Green Earth would anybody want to reintroduce this broken formula in a mod that is supposed to make fights more difficult is beyond me.

I never noticed this problem before, because before this run, I had only soloed Tactics. Now that I am playing Tactics with a party, I cannot take these fights seriously anymore. I no longer bother to buff up my party before entering a boss fight, because HEY! We do not need any protection! Just slap a pair of Boots of Haste on Rena and let her rip, while the rest of the party deal damage.

If I were to give my honest opinion, Tactics has made most of the fights EASIER for parties, not harder. As I said, I am not taking these fights seriously anymore. No more pre-buffing. No more potion gulping. It is just too predictable now.

Which was why it was funny when I fought the Shadow Dragon. Now that, that fight took me by surprise. Firkraag was broken by Tactics too, but he struggled valiantly to combat the Tactics Geas that compelled him to attack Rena.

In conclusion thus far, I feel that the Tactics mods is only suitable for soloists. Once a person realises how the AI behaves in Tactics, it makes too many of the boss fights easy. Disturbingly so really.

Most of the difficulties I had so far, were SELF-IMPOSED. I chose not to rest. I chose not to pre-buff. I chose to fight Firkraag even though the whole damn party was fatigued and lacking in Fire Resistances. Etc... Not because of Tactics.

Originally posted by SixOfSpades: I'm fine with Item Upgrades, largely because if I don't agree with an item, all I have to do is not make it. Sure, Improved Kitthix is a ToB-level summon, available in Chapter 2 and for a fraction of what it should cost, AND you can get 2 of them. . . but that doesn't mean that other items, like the Girdle of Glory or the Buckler of Amaunator, aren't well worth using.

Those items are in the minority though. [img]smile.gif[/img] In any case, this is just my personal decision, because I wish to ramp up the difficulty of my game in the future. I am mainly trying Item Upgrades this time round, because I wanted to know how broken some items are. It is one thing to read about a broken item, and quite another to actually use it. This way, I can be more... hmm... fair in my reviews.

Originally posted by SixOfSpades: By the way--nice job with the shampoo bit. And see what I mean about Weimer's willy-nilly damage ratings? "This Dagger does as much damage as a 2-Handed Sword, because. . . because it does, that's why!"

Thanks. [img]smile.gif[/img]

As for the damage, one must take note of Firetooth's existence. I have no idea why Firetooth and the Boomerang Dagger have Bastard Sword damage values, but they do.

[Dundee Slaytern]

Originally posted by Olorin: Backstabbing trolls: Just to clarify, did you have the same problems when backstabbing with poison weapon activated? If so, perhaps switching to a weapon with lower damage + poison weapon would work (if backstab doesn't kill, poison will hopefully finish them AND ensure they stay dead).

It is not about the poison, but the fact that Trolls tend to explode when they die from a backstab. Backstabbing somehow bypasses their 'cannot explode' script and breaks it. Body explosion is permanent death, but Trolls are not supposed to have that, so the script goes whacked and spawns a dead body that is immuned to everything, including poison, fire, acid, etc...

[True_Moose]

I know I'm a little late to the party, but wouldn't an SoA only Kensai=>Thief be able to get to 25 Strength via an off-hand Crom Faeyr? I don't have my tables handy, but I think that would bump up the damage slightly.

[Dundee Slaytern]

Not by sacrificing the damage from a certain SoA 2-Handed weapon. [img]smile.gif[/img]

1d6+9dmg is not to be taken lightly. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Furthermore, STR damage bonuses are applied AFTER the backstab modifier. So you get at most, +4dmg compared to 24 STR( from a Critical Hit).

[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by Dundee Slaytern: As for the cloak, is it from that mod Lich?

Yes.

All an Assassin need to make Beholders cry is those items. . . which, when combined, give the same effect as the Cloak of Mirroring, but you feel batter about it, since it takes more work to obtain all of them, and you can't use them until hitting ToB levels anyway.

As for the Imprisonment, I seem to remember the Book of Infinite Spells worked for me (once only), although that was a while ago. . . more recently, I get through the Hive Mother's defenses by having somebody whack her with C, but since that would mean putting your Assassin into melee, that could be a problem. Good thing that there's nothing wrong with using a stack of Traps against an enemy that cheesy.

I do not particularly mind encountering Dragons in the outdoors. It is the way you encounter it, and the AI that troubles me.

True. All the original wilderness Waylays had this problem, too--you just suddenly took it into your head to lead the party down a blind gully, and wait there until the enemies walk up behind you. But since BioWare's waylays consisted of nothing worse than Orogs, nobody cared.
I don't mind fighting the various types of beasties in this component, I simply demand more realism than Kensai Ryu saw fit to give us. And the opportinuty to run from any fight in which we do not wish to engage--except the Dragon fight, since they can see the invisible, and fly faster than you can run.

As for the damage, one must take note of Firetooth's existence. I have no idea why Firetooth and the Boomerang Dagger have Bastard Sword damage values, but they do.

I've never claimed that the Boomerang or Firetooth were balanced, either. [img]tongue.gif[/img] I do use them (and similar weapons, like CFury) occasionally, but only by non-Warriors, or in a Warrior's offhand.

[theGrimm]

Speaking of trolls. I've been 5x backstabbing trolls (Kai enabled) with the +3 sword of roses and have yet to see an invincible troll.

Backstab. Troll stands still for about a second. Falls. Dies to flail of ages.

Character: Kensai / Mage / Thief
Strength: 19
No Poison

Lacking knowledge of the game (troll hitpoints, etc.) I can only guess that a 5x backstab is not enough to trigger troll-chunkify, whereas a 7x backstab is?

However, I've backstabbed injured trolls, too, and still not encountered an invincible troll.

Could it be one of your installed components?

I've certainly encountered tolls "forgetting to die", and it's irritating, because you never know when they are supposed to be dead. Certainly, I've done more damage to a single troll than any other creature in SoA and ToB

[Armen]

those trolls in the middle of the druid grvoe map can be hard to finish off - i've had them survive multiple hits from fire/acid arrows bafore they decide to die (often regenerating enough to pop back up in the process)

they're a bit of a lottery, trolls are [img]smile.gif[/img]

i won't hear a bad word spoken about Tactics spirit trolls though - gotta love getting 12K XP for knocking them down and <>another[/i] 12K for finishing them off (only sometimes though)

[Olorin]

My experience is that trolls forget to die when you are hitting them so fast that they are constantly doing their getting hit animation. Having everyone switch targets gives the troll time to fall. On the other hand, if it's just near dead, but not waiting to fall, you don't want to stop hitting it.

My solution is to switch all but one of my party to a new target, while one person continues to attack the troll. Usually I have this be either an archer with fire/acid arrows, or a fighter with an elemental weapon. That way, they can still knock the troll down if I switched to early, and they'll be able to finish it off for good. One attacker doesn't seems to hit often enough to keep the troll standing.

If you've done solo games, you probably didn't have to deal with trolls that forget to die...unless you summon too many sword spiders [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Shrietkar]

SoS. Quick question about your earlier stated "extra cheese". Curious as to why you already had the boots of speed when encountering the party in the sewers. Having the boots of speed requires a trip to the planar prison I believe, which in turn requires a trip to Mekrath's tower. Surely it would have made more sense to take out the party then, rather than waiting untill you already had the boots of speed. Unless of course, the extra cheese was pre-planned. [img]tongue.gif[/img]